The apartment

I promised a photo tour of my apartment.  Here it is.

To start with, we have my door.  It's blue.

Come inside!  I don't have a storm door.  Apparently Japan doesn't have those, which is unfortunate, because my hall is always freezing.  On the bright side I have this neat little mail slot.

As you can see from the above picture there's a slightly recessed area by the door before the main area of the house.  This is for taking off one's shoes.  This area is seen in all houses and apartments that I've been to. Here, no one wears their shoes in the house.  At all.  Usually, the resident's shoes are stored on a little shelf like this one:

And everyone else usually leaves their shoes in the shoe-removal pit.

Now, if you'll look to my left we have the doors for the shower and the toilet.  This separation seems very practical to me.

And if you'll look to my right, we have the door for the hand washing sink.  Putting it two doors away from the toilet, as compared to doing so with the shower/bath, seems pretty ridiculous and weird.  You mean I have to touch two door handles before washing my hands?  No, seriously, what the hell.

Okay, turning around and looking to my left we have the kitchenette.  It has a stove that can heat water or fry things.  It has two separate burners for this.  I'm not sure why.  Next to that is my basket of tasty stuff that came as a welcome present for me, and that I have subsequently filled with more tasty stuff, including tea, the crackers my host mother gave to me, and chocolates.  Next to that there's a decent sized sink, along with a pitiful dish draining area and the cheapest dish soap I could find.  I was amazed to discover that one of the frying pans that came with the apartment, the one shown here, is actually pretty nice.  Tina did not have such luck, but she has a working vacuum cleaner, so we share stuff.

And just to the right of that we have my toaster oven, my unused rice cooker (we always make rice at Tina's), my microwave (700 watt, just like in college), and my refrigerator/freezer.  Tina's refrigerator freezes practically everything on its lowest setting, so for dinner I usually have to carry everything over from my fridge to Tina's so we can cook it.

Behind us I have a closet, but I neglected to take a picture of it.

Entering the inner door, which you'll see in a second from the inside, we have my main room.  I have a desk, a small bookshelf, a computer chair and a TV that I don't watch.  I should actually, because in this context it's educational, but I guess I've just gotten used to hardly ever watching TV and I'm more than fine with that.  Maybe I'll check it out eventually.  Oh, and I have a rug, which is nice.

 On the other side of the room, we have my shelf that I found in my closet and assembled, the frosted glass sliding door that I've become rather fond of, another closet/cupboard and my sleeping cavern.

Basically, it's a lofted futon.  Can't see?  Follow me into my sleep cavern!

There! Now isn't that better?  Overhead there is a bright reading light, and if you look to the right...

...there's the back of my hall closet.  At first I thought this was really weird, but it has come in handy for not having to lug stuff up into the bed, and if I accidentally make it too warm I can crack the door to my perpetually cold hallway.

And that's pretty much it.  If you're wondering at all about Tina's apartment, here are some of the principal differences:

Tina has a mini couch  thing instead of a rug.

Tina has a rickety wooden chair instead of a computer chair.

Other than that, they're pretty much the mirror image of each other.

Thanks for reading/viewing!